


Pick and Choose

by laughablyunimportant



Category: Homestuck, Ouran High School Host Club - All Media Types
Genre: Crossover, Hurt/Comfort, Loneliness, M/M, Ouranstuck, Secret Identity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-01
Updated: 2012-06-01
Packaged: 2018-06-03 19:40:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6623656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughablyunimportant/pseuds/laughablyunimportant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The members of Alternia High's human and troll host clubs decide to run a contest to see who can figure out what Karkat's afraid of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pick and Choose

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this ages ago, opened it up recently, and was like, damn, this is pretty good! I should post it with all my other Homestuck one shots!
> 
> There's a whole chunk missing in the middle where I just totally skipped over a scene. And that's kind of eh of me as an author, but, I wrote this four years ago! I don't really want to clean it up, just post it.
> 
> So apologies, but, not particularly heartfelt apologies.

Nepeta bounced on her feet, fangs catching the flickering firelight of the main cabin room. "So whoever finds out what Karkitty is afraid of gets the purrictures?"

Kanaya nodded, her own expression serene as she collapsed the fanned-out photos into a single tidy stack. "That is the agreement. Though it should be mentioned that if Karkat should come to harm in the course of this little game, I will have no choice but to reprimand the guilty party most severely." 

They didn't really take her mildly-delivered threat seriously until Feferi draped an arm around her shoulder, flashing a sharp-toothed smile. "It shore would be a shame if I had to miss out on mascot-feeding duty for a whole week!" 

The others swallowed nervously at that. Feeding Gl'bgolyb was not the most pleasant of tasks, even for her chosen liaison. It looked like they'd have to play the game with kid gloves, as it were. 

Not that everyone was playing—in fact, the only serious players seemed to be John, Jade, Dave, Nepeta (and by extension, Equius), Terezi, and Eridan. 

 

The obvious contenders were quickly exhausted—neither shiver nor shudder was elicited by bugs, heights, snakes, dogs, cats (or any of the other animals Nepeta threw his way), or ghosts—the last one being pretty much a given, but John had been just so _eager_ to try. 

Rose executed a very dignified 2X Facepalm Combo at the sight of John jumping out from behind a corner wrapped in a hotel bedsheet, but despite all that, Karkat still seemed to not have picked up on the fact that anything strange was going on.

As far as Karkat was concerned, everyone was just being their perfectly normal-crazy selves, exhibiting behavior that he found nothing short of absurd (but perhaps a little endearing—at least, in some cases). 

Whatever they were all up to, he did his best to ignore them, spending time with his gaggle of clients who were delighting in how "quaint" and "adorable" it was that he'd never seen snow. A few of them had convinced him to try skiing, and he actually wasn't doing too badly, an instinctual sense of balance and control of weight distribution helping him keep up with the clients that _oohed_ and _ahhed_ over his rapid progress. 

It had been at least an hour since a member from either the human or troll Host Club had popped out of the snow to surprise him, and he was just starting to relax when he heard the shouts.

 

Someone else should've gotten there first. Someone else _would_ have gotten there first, all their much longer legs eating up the distance in the deep snow, if Karkat hadn't recognized the threat before it even manifested. It was a skill of his, recognizing the excrement just before it hit the whirling device, and by the time anyone else even knew there was a problem, Karkat had reached the small gang of trolls making trouble. Three bluebloods, roughing up the human club’s few troll patrons, berating them for hanging with humans and trying to entice them back to the lodge to "warm up." 

(Which was exactly the right kind of bullshit, wasn’t it? Like there weren’t plenty of human patrons to the troll host club, like they weren’t practically _the same club_ with the way Rose’ and Kanaya’s co-leaderships had been going. But anything to reassert troll superiority and hey, maybe maim a couple lowbloods in the bargain, right?)

Karkat didn't give them any warning, delivering a kick to the biggest blue the second he arrived, pulling out his sickles in a smooth movement and warding off the other two, placing himself between the troll clients and the three interlopers. 

Too bad it turned out there were four interlopers. 

A flicker of movement was his only warning before his head snapped to the side, the heretofore unseen indigo-blood driving their fist into his jaw hard enough to make spots dance in his vision. His scythes dropped from nerveless fingers as he stumbled back, before another troll pounced on him, bearing him all the way to the ground. 

His clients fled—trolls never had a very strong sense of loyalty when it came to putting themselves in harm's way for others—and at four to one he didn't have much of a chance, especially with an indigo in the mix. 

He wasn't sure how long it was before the others arrived in enough force to drive the interlopers away, but it was a space of time crowded with pain, with barely-blocked—and sometimes not—blows, curling in on himself to try to minimize the damage, hands over his neck to protect the only thing maintaining the illusion that he was human. 

Then they were gone, and there was just pain, and cold, snow an almost welcoming numbing force. He considered briefly burrowing deeper into it, but that seemed like an awful lot of effort, and then John was there, making noises and running his hands over the broken boy, Nepeta crowding in close, and Dave, and Kanaya, and—he couldn't separate them all, hovering over him, voices murmured panic and confusion.

"Karkat! Karkat! Are you okay? Oh man Karkat please be okay—Jake can you help me pick him up—no I—careful!"

He felt their hands lifting him and growled, remembering at the last minute to lighten up on the feral troll timbre to it. "M'Fine," he muttered, trying to untwist his limbs and stand. 

Rose caught him when it looked like he was about to fall, violet eyes boring into his when she said, "You need medical attention." 

He opened his mouth to protest, but when she continued "I'll see to it myself," he snapped his mouth shut, giving a small nod. She was right. He. Fuck. More things hurt than he cared to count. And he needed to make sure the chip hadn't been damaged. 

He just needed to get back to someplace quiet, somewhere he didn't have to answer their looks, the looks that said _we're glad you're not dead, but how? how did you stand up to four trolls and live?_

They didn't ask the question out loud, for which he was grateful, not sure he could come up with a coherent answer just then. They fussed and half-carried him back to the lodge, him grumbling the whole time, shoving them off with another "I'm fine" as he crossed the threshold into the warm faux-wood cabin interior. 

He had a second to register John's hurt look before Rose and Kanaya ushered him into one of the private rooms, clucking at everyone to stay back, give him privacy, he needed air.

* * *   
Karkat was a mess. Rose patched him up—wasn't too hard, once Kanaya extracted the chip and took it to Roxy to look over for any damage—Karkat quiet, obedient to Rose's murmured commands. 

He finished off with two pain pills that she insisted he take, but even after he swallowed them dry she didn't leave, just looking at him, arms crossed and back straight.

"What?" The growling edge was back, and this time he didn't try to curb it. 

She didn't say anything, but when Karkat opened his mouth to deliver a composed on the fly scathing tirade, she moved, almost too quick to see, pushing him back into the bed with a forceful shove, needles out and at his throat before he could get a word out.

He stared up at her. "What the fuck Lalonde?"

She found his carotid with a needle, dull point picking out his thrumming pulse. "What do you think you were doing today?" His nails dug into the bedspread, resisting the urge to do the same to her flesh. 

"Defending our clients from a couple of douchenozzles, what the fuck did it look like?"

"Because you are just brilliant at defending yourself," she mocked. 

He scowled up at her, but there wasn't much he could say to that, on his back and pinned by a human girl. 

"What, are we not about protecting people anymore? Someone might wanna tell Dave that, with the way he's always throwing his weight around for Jade and Roxy." Not that either of them needed it.

Her needle pressed more firmly into his throat, and for a moment he felt bone-chilling cold, deeper than even the snow, like the cold embrace of nothingness—and then she was off, pulling back from him to sit straight on the mattress, needles disappearing into her strife specibus. 

"We fight our battles as a group. It's a human thing." He couldn't miss her emphasis on human, slight as it was.

"Well, I'm not human," he said, sitting up, resisting the urge to rub at his throat.

"You don't get to pick and choose." He wanted to argue with her, but her tone was more threatening than any weapon. "You want to act like a troll? Fine. Go at it. But the only battles you should be fighting are your own. Defending others is a human thing, and if you want to do it, you'll wait until there's someone else to have _your_ back. You do not get to pick and choose elements from either culture as you please." 

She stood to leave, almost reaching the door before Karkat's angry burst of "Why _not_?" stopped her.

She paused, back to him, hand on the doorknob to the room. 

"Because that is how people get hurt," she said, voice quiet and soft. 

And then she was gone, leaving Karkat alone in the room, staring at his grey-skinned visage in the mirror in silence.

* * *

The others missed him at dinner—Roxy had delivered the chip back to him in “totes working condition,” but he was still refusing to leave his room. John was particularly fretful, glancing at the door every few moments as though Karkat might walk in if he just willed it hard enough. 

He pushed his chair out after the third course, unable to stand it any longer, excusing himself with a muttered "Not hungry," and rushing out of the dining hall. 

[insert emotional scene where John continues yelling at Karkat for getting himself hurt, for thinking he could take on trolls by himself—he knows it sucks, but trolls and humans are _different_ , and they can't change that, and they have to be careful sometimes—and then]

John cut off abruptly when the lights went out. "What…?"

"What the actual fuck?" Karkat shouted, shooting to his feet, then wincing and sitting back down when it produced a stabbing pain in his side. 

John strode over to the window, helped by his familiarity with the layout of the room, since in the sudden darkness he was basically moving blind. He cupped his hands around the glass, peering out into the night, but it offered him no clues, the heavy clouds that had moved in after sunset obscuring any light the sky might have given him.

"Huh," he said, turning around. "Maybe a storm blew out the power? It was picking up a bit after sunset. I hope—" His words stumbled to a stop, halted by a sound coming from somewhere around the bed. He took a cautious step forward. "Karkat?"

Karkat whimpered.

John was at his side in seconds, banging his legs on the bed before finding his way around to Karkat, hand scrabbling to find his friend’s and lace their fingers together. "Karkat? Are you okay?"

"F-fine," Karkat spat out. "Just fuck-king peachy, except for the massive putrefied slimeball pawing at me in the dark."

John snatched his hand back, giving an awkward chuckle. "Oh, uh, okay. Did you want me to leave?"

"Could god really be so kind to me? Will my one measly wish in the whole of fucking existence be granted? It can't be so. Pinch me, I must be dreaming."

John frowned at that, standing. "Fuck off! I care about you, you know! You don’t have to be such a dick about it." His voice changed in quality as he moved across the room, on a more or less straight path to the door. He turned the knob, the soft click seeming overloud in the quiet room, and then—

"Don't." John paused. "Please don't go." Karkat's voice sounded—small. Small and scared. John hesitated, then pulled the door shut, taking hesitant steps back into the room. "Are you…afraid of the dark?"

"No!" John reached out toward the sound, fingertips catching Karkat's skin—his cheek, John thought—before Karkat jerked back with a cry. He curled up on the bed on his side, shivers wracking his body as he brought his knees up to his chest. 

"Are you okay?" John asked, even though he knew the other boy couldn't be. Not making sounds like that.

"I'm f-fine." His words were angry and sharp, only slightly undercut by the way his voice broke in the middle. "There's nothing wrong with me."

"I didn't say there was." He reached out again, sitting on the bed, pausing. "I'm going to touch you, okay?"

Karkat made a muffled sound that might have been meant to ward John off, but then John's hand was on Karkat's waist, feeling the tremors running up and down the other boy's body, and John wouldn't have backed up for anything. 

"Oh wow," he breathed. "You really _are_ afraid of the dark."

"Shut up," he growled, but John could feel the way his muscles loosened when John spoke, then bunched up and tensed again when the room fell silent. 

"Do you want me to…keep talking?" He asked. The silence stretched for a few minutes, tremors still running through Karkat, breathing a little too fast. 

Then, "Don't leave me alone. Please. Just. Let me know you're there, okay?"

John's eyes widened a fraction in the darkness. Don't leave him alone…? Did Karkat think he'd…but then. 

Then. Karkat was used to being alone. Wasn't he? He didn't talk about his mom much, but Rose seemed to think there was a story there, and had divulged, at least, that the woman had died when Karkat was ten, leaving him to be passed off to a secondary guardian, cold and distant and, from what John heard, involved in a crime syndicate. 

He wondered how often Karkat sat in front of his computer, all the lights blazing, just waiting for one of the names on his chumroll to light up so he didn't have to face the dark alone.

The thought made his chest ache.

Before he'd really thought it through, John gathered Karkat up in his arms, ignoring the indignant noises and settling firmly on the mattress, Karkat nestled up against his him, chest to chest, John's legs wrapping around the smaller boy as if to cage him in, keep him close. 

Karkat tried to protest, but John cut him off with a "Shh," pulling Karkat to him, until Karkat's head was leaning against John's chest, heartbeat thumping loud in his ear. 

John rubbed Karkat's back, burying his nose in the other boy's hair, gripping him close. "Hear that?" he said. "I'm right here. I'm right here, and I'm not going anywhere."

Karkat didn't say anything. But he didn't pull away, either. 

He clung to John in the dark, listening to his beating heart, to the sound of his breathing, feeling the warmth of his touch and the firmness of the hands that held him in place. 

And slowly, slowly, Karkat relaxed, muscles loosening as he thought that maybe. Maybe this was someone who really would stick around. Maybe he didn't have to be alone anymore.

"Heh," John broke the silence, wishing Karkat would give some sign he was okay now. "Sure would be nice to be trolls now, huh? I bet they could see right through this dark like nothing had even happened. They wouldn't care about being alone, either."

Aaaand maybe not.

 

(Later, when their door opened and Dave and Dirk peeked in, wielding their phones as flashlights (why didn't they think of that), it felt bright enough to blind, though still dark enough to hide John's blush when they started in on their teasing of how perverted he was, using the power outage as an excuse to get up close and personal with poor innocent Karkat. To which John spluttered and denied, but. Never explained that it had been to quiet Karkat’s fears.

No one ever did claim the prize for finding out what Karkat was afraid of.)


End file.
